Lung Cancer Drug May Treat Breast Cancer

British scientists say that carboplatin, a drug now used to treat lung and ovarian cancer, may be effective against one type of breast cancer.

Working with mice, a team led by Dr. Andrew Tutt, a consulting oncologist at Guys’ and St. Thomas’s National Health Service Foundation in London, found that tumors caused by mutations in the BRCA gene were sensitive to carboplatin, which appeared to be up to 20 times more effective than standard therapies.

There is an increasing realization that breast cancer is not just one disease, but that different types of tumors will respond differently to particular drugs, Tutt told the Times of London. This genetically tailored chemotherapy treatment acts in a much more focused manner than standard chemotherapy.

Tutt and his colleagues are recruiting cancer patients with BRCA1 and BRCA2 tumors to compare carboplatin against docetaxel in a clinical trial.